Robert Johns, Lynn Bennie,
and James Mitchell, "Gendered nationalism The gender gap in
support for the Scottish National Party," Party Politics 18
(July, 2012), 581-601. [Available at http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/vol18/issue4/
]

First paragraph:
Researchers exploring the bases of support for political
parties have typically looked to social and economic
factors, pre-eminently class and religion. However, this
approach has enjoyed only limited success when applied to
ethno-regionalist parties in general (De Winter and
Cachafeiro, 2002) and to the Scottish National Party (SNP)
in particular. The nationalist basis of SNP support is
unmistakable: those who feel Scottish rather than British
and those who share the party's commitment to independence
are disproportionately likely to support the SNP. Yet
Scottish identity and support for independence cut across
the traditional cleavages, and so analyses of the SNP vote
have tended to emphasize heterogeneity, with researchers
remarking on the party's ability to win support across
social groups (McCrone, 1992: 164-6; Miller, 1981; Paterson,
2006). Furthermore, the few patterns that did distinguish
SNP electoral support, such as relative strength among
younger voters and relative weakness among Catholics (Bennie
et al., 1997: Ch. 8; Kendrick, 1983), are gradually being
eroded. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, when the
SNP became the largest party in Scotland for the first time,
its support was even more than usually drawn from across the
social and economic board (Johns et al., 2010).

Last Paragraph:
(first paragraph of conclusions) Despite having had
prominent senior female politicians, the SNP has generally
polled better among men and has a disproportionately small
proportion of women members. Popular speculation about the
reasons for this has focused on two factors: first,
fluctuations in the party's commitment to and record on
gender equality in representation; second, on the party's
leadership. We found some evidence that the gender gap in
SNP electoral support in 2007 was partly due to the relative
popularity of Alex Salmond among male voters. However, our
analyses reveal a much more powerful explanation for the
gender gaps in both electoral support and membership. The
party's flagship policy is Scottish independence. Support
for that option is a strong motivation both for its voters
and its members and such support is markedly stronger among
men than among women. This goes a long way to solving our
puzzle.